Skyddet av statliga samlingar i svenska museer, arkiv och bibliotek i händelse av krig, ca 1914–2018

The protection of state-owned museums, archives and libraries in Sweden in case of war, c. 1914–2018 This essay investigates how parts of the collections of public museums, archives and libraries were to be evacuated in case of an armed conflict in Sweden in the 20th and early 21st centuries. It is based on previously classified archival documents, public inquiries and policies. The author has studied the protection and uses of cultural heritage in war-time Scandinavia. This research is further developed in the present essay by presenting a timeline up to year 2018. An important reason for this research is the worsening of the international security in the Baltic Sea region since the Russian occupation of the Crimean peninsula. The Swedish Contingency Agency (Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap) and the National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet) have commissioned the author to study the development of policies in Sweden and to analyse the current situation both domestically and internationally. Much of the previous experience from preparing Swedish society for war have been forgotten over the years as the civil defense was disassembled. The results of the project are only partially accounted for here, leaving out most of the international context and focusing the domestic historical development. A study of the archives of state agencies that historically have had the responsibility to coordinate evacuation planning have not been possible to include in the present paper. The project continues and will result in publications promising to give a more complete picture. The first preparations for protecting collections in case of war were made in the autumn of 1914, but the measures taken then were limited to some central government archives in Stockholm together with some of the elite collections in the capitol. As war became more imminent in Spring 1939, preparations were made anew. This time action was more urgent since there was the fear of air war with possibly devastating consequences for civil society. Large volumes of archives, museum and book collections were evacuated from Stockholm to mansions and castles at a presumably safe distance from the capitol, which was expected to be bombed if Sweden was attacked. After the war a completely new organisation for civil defense was developed. The issue of evacuation of cultural property was investigated for some time, and in the early 1960s policies were put in place to better coordinate and prioritise the needs for evacuation in war-time. The level of preparedness seems to have peaked a decade later, when the policies had begun to become implemented. Plans were however hampered by the fact that there were never sufficient safe spaces to move even the most valuable parts of the collections to, and although a new and bomb-proof building was erected for the National Archives (Riksarkivet), the equivalent was not built for central museums or for the Royal Library (Kungl. Biblioteket) during the Cold War (1945–91). There were plans to reinforce existing bomb-proof shelters in Stockholm and to build a few more for collections, but these plans dit never fit into the budget of so called “total defense”, which included civil defense. Instead, as much as possible of the collections were to stay in Stockholm, whereas objects that could be moved without risking their condition were to be evacuated mostly to old masonry buildings such as mansions or churches in the countryside. In the 1980s and the 1990s the total defense began to be dissassembled in Sweden, a process that resulted in its complete dissolution in the beginning of the new millennium. There was no longer any military threat to Sweden. By this time most of the Cold War preparedness of the heritage sector seems to have passed into oblivion, since there were other and more pressing issues to deal with. More recently, the international development in Europe has led to a decision to once again rebuild a total defense in Sweden. MSB was given the task of coordinating the plans for evacuation of central heritage institutions in Stockholm in 2018, but evacuation plans are missing and the work to increase the level of preparedness of these institutions has merely begun. The relatively high level of preparedness that existed in the early 1970s had taken more than a decade to develop. The study shows that it takes time to for institutions to build preparedness, and that it has to be properly planned and coordinated in order to carry out measures swiftly and efficiently when it becomes necessary. Finally, it is suggested that MSB should establish and lead a committee with representatives from the major state institutions managing collections in order to implement the law on evacuation